The Weight of Money

I’ve fallen behind on setting these – time to get back on track with setting goals.

Remain within the new household budget.

This may sound simple enough, but this is a new budget and a fairly comprehensive for our monthly spending. I’m hoping that it will go well. Next month we’ll have even more money since I’ll have a full month’s worth of pay to work with.

Set up individual contribution to company retirement account.

I decided while still in school that I would contribute at least 10% from every job I have. I’m now in my first job post college and time to put those words to the test. My company will also contribute 5% this year and then 10% every year following. My goal is to increase my personal contribution to at least 15% next year.

Support the partner’s move to contributing to his 401K plan.

The partner has been reading financial books and has a renewed interest in retirement planning. It looks like he is about to take that step and finally start contributing. My new position will save us about $50 a paycheck and he’ll use those funds to start contributing. Originally he was only going to do half that amount per check but after considering the pre-tax benefits, I think he is committed to contributing the full amount.

Limit dining out to no more than $100.

Simple enough, we’ll see if it happens. There is a camping event coming up that will prolly eat through that budget this weekend – I’ll do what I can to avoid it.

Max budget of $200 for upcoming camping/event weekend.

I’ve gone on this trip at least twice a year for the past six years. I should not need to buy anything else! I’m factoring the food into the grocery budget and not planning any additional purchases – other than the tent we just bought.

Establish debt repayment plan and savings investing schedule by Oct. 30.

By the end of next month I should have enough information to properly set up our formal debt repayment plan. This will be a much needed relief since we have two months of minimum payments only – ack. While I know that you should not be building savings while you’re paying off high interest debt, we just can’t let our almost nonexistent savings stand still while we tackle our debt. No really, I know all the reasons against this method, but our personal preference and comfort level demands socking away some savings so that we have some money to buy a house next year. The low monthly payments alone won’t be enough to buy a house and we need to get into a house asap.

Continue reading financial books and sharing them with the partner.

The partner holds a lot of credit in things he reads; more than the things he hears. I often mistrust texts and words and will ready at least 5 books on a subject before deciding what I believe. I will continue bringing home financial books from the library and setting out one for the partner to read when I feel that are inline with my approach to finances. The biggest benefit to this plan is that the more the partner reads, the more time he spends things about finances and considering the impact of all of our financial choices.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 2nd, 2006 at 2:29 pm and is filed under general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.